Charles C. W. Cooke wrote an excellent piece for National Review about ISIS, barbarism, and the inadequate wishful response to evil that pervades our society. He touches on a subject I've thought about often: the philosophical drive behind modern liberal thinking.
His best words, in my opinion, are: "Elsewhere, others are seeking explanations as to what might have pushed Foley’s killers to such extraordinary lengths. Perhaps, they ask, IS’s behavior is the fault of something else. The United States’ invasion of Iraq, maybe? Or the legacy of colonialism, or of global inequality? Do these men just need running water? This instinct is folly, the product of the mistaken conviction that man is perfectible and his nature pliant, and that there is something intrinsically different about our age."
That mistaken conviction is the cancerous principle behind most, if not all, liberal policies and talking points. Foreign policy is a great example. The United States has been pouring money into Afghanistan since the 1940s in the hopes that improved conditions will beget improved culture. This, of course, has been an utter disaster. If anything, it has only given evil men more tools to use toward preying on the innocent. There's a reason the Taliban uses AK-47s and Russian tanks; they simply absorbed modern tools into their medieval culture of tribal warfare.
So too does ISIS commit unthinkable acts and use the internet to make its aims clear. They are carrying out jihad, just like they have for thousands of years, only now they have Twitter accounts (no, seriously, I've seen them). They know what technology is, they know what Western culture is, and they know what democracy, wealth, and prosperity look like. They don't care, because they are not driven by such material concerns. They believe in an evil god who tells them to do evil things.
Westerners like to think men are driven by circumstance above all. Men only commit evil out of deception driven by desperation, we tell ourselves. Every man is the equivalent of a street urchin stealing an apple because he's hungry and knows no better. If someone would just take that urchin in, give him a hot meal, tell him about social justice, and tell him he can do whatever he sets his mind to, he'll become an enlightened, valuable, inoffensive member of a happy society.
We see this line of thought in domestic policy as well. Government spending programs are based on the idea that throwing money at a problem will improve the situation and therefore people's lives. School spending is a profound example of this. As schools churn out students who, if they're lucky, can barely read, solutions are sought. Surely, if the teachers just had iPads, they'd be better able to make positive impacts on their students. And so, more and more money is spent, while education sinks deeper. The problem is, no one wants to face the real problem: what are students taught? What character are they developing? Down what kind of path are they led?
Down to its core, the difference between liberals and conservatives is this: liberals think people are basically good, and conditions can drive them to be bad. Conservatives think people are basically evil, and conditions can drive them to be worse. To be sure, both recognize the possibility of good in humanity. No one would donate to charity otherwise. But liberals think that things like altruism, forgiveness, tolerance (to the extreme degree) are the norm. Conservatives see them as the exception. A good exception, and one to be encouraged wherever possible, but the exception nonetheless, and one that cannot be coerced out of people.
That leads me to the point I really want to make. Liberals want their norm, a perfect society, to be real at any cost. Imperfections have to be changed, sometimes weeded out. That includes people who don't share their vision: conservatives (Christians in particular). You can't expect other people to be evil in a society free of all human evil; such thoughts cannot belong. Thomas More wrote excellently on this in Utopia. The Utopian people have no locks, no way of shutting people out, no privacy, because of course, no one would take advantage of such vulnerability. For this to work, everyone has to think exactly the same way, believe exactly the same things, live exactly the same way, by the same rules, in every aspect of their lives.
And thus we reach the interminable contradiction of liberal philosophy. To be fully tolerant, to include all of humanity, they must be intolerant to the point of eradicating all dissent. This is, while perhaps not the most blatant form of evil (the Islamists beheading journalists have something to say about that), it may be the most dangerous: evil that has total faith that it is, in fact, unequivocally good. For all its claims of nuance and understanding, it is ultimately yet another fundamentalist movement, to use our pet modern lingo. There is a ruthless simplicity behind it: humanity is good, we will make it good, and you better be good, or else.
For ISIS, that "or else" is public beheading. For American liberals... well, I think we have yet to see how far they will go.
Well thought out and well expressed.
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